


Logical Recovery

by Ladybug_21



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: Case Fic, Found Family, Gen, Post-Canon, PostWar, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-07 20:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21464389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: After the showdown with Marta Magro at the warehouses, Jean, Millie, and Lucy embark for Glasgow to find Eliška. Archival research, an extended stay with Jean's cousin, undercover rescue missions, and much emotional processing of past events ensue.
Relationships: Lucy Davis & Jean McBrien, Lucy Davis & Millie Harcourt, Millie Harcourt & Jean McBrien
Comments: 15
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Logical Recovery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mangledgutspretending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mangledgutspretending/gifts).

> I've kind of wanted to write this fic ever since I watched _The Bletchley Circle_ several years ago, so I was delighted to be assigned the fandom for Yuletide this year! mangledgutspretending, my apologies if I somehow overlooked a Dear Yuletide Author letter from you; I checked your [tumblr](https://mangled-guts-pretending.tumblr.com/) daily until mid-November, and then decided that I should really just start writing and hope that this story would be something like what you wanted. (And I apologise if you were hoping for feels-driven ship fic, since this is very plot-driven gen fic... I wasn't sure what your preferred ships for this fandom were and didn't want to risk writing a pairing that you really hate!)
> 
> As a disclaimer, I haven't watched _The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco_, so this story is based entirely on the original two seasons. I obviously own no rights to the series or to any other fandoms that may receive tiny nods. And oodles of thanks to my two wonderful betas, [april_rainer (tom_bedlam)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tom_bedlam) and [Shiguresflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiguresflower), for helping me figure out the pacing of this story!

Jean specifically told Millie to pack her woollies for the train to Glasgow, but Millie would have completely forgotten to bring extra layers if Lucy hadn't foisted them on her en route to the station.

"I knew you hadn't gone back to your flat since, well, everything," Lucy explained as she pressed the bundle into Millie's arms. "So I stopped by and got a few of your things for you."

"Lucy, you're a dear." Millie's smile dipped fleetingly into a confused frown. "Although, however did you get inside?"

"Oh," Lucy blushed, "well, you see, remember how I showed you how Ben taught me to pick locks? I hope you don't mind that I, erm..."

Millie threw back her head and laughed.

"Not at all, darling," she promised Lucy, planting a kiss on the top of the younger woman's head. "Just as long as you locked up after you left. You take care of yourself while we're away, won't you? No running off with DS Gladstone before we get back to wish you well, you hear?"

"Of course not," grinned Lucy happily. "In fact, I was thinking..."

The tap of a cane behind them on the train platform announced Jean's arrival before either Millie or Lucy turned around.

"Don't tell me, you nearly forgot those," Jean sighed, glancing at the pullovers that Millie clutched in her arms. "Good thing Lucy has a mind like a steel trap. How are you both?"

"Fine," Millie insisted with her usual confidence.

"Good," Jean answered, her tone light despite the searching glance she threw in Millie's direction. "Ready, then?"

"Bye for now, darling," Millie said, turning to give Lucy a hug.

"I'm coming with you," Lucy told her.

Millie blinked.

"You are? But, but Ben and your job..."

"I asked, and Scotland Yard thought I should go with you, especially if there's any more information concerning the Magros' associates that needs remembering." Lucy's voice faltered. "Unless you don't _want_ me to join you..."

"Of course we do, dear," Jean replied crisply, tapping her way towards one of the train's compartments. "Glasgow at this time of year may be brisk, but not so brisk that Millie will need both of those pullovers at the same time. Come along, you two, before the train leaves without us."

Lucy dutifully stowed Jean's bag for her, then immediately claimed one of the window seats in their compartment. As the train chugged out of Euston Station with a shrill whistle, she all but pressed her nose against the glass, drinking in the sights and sounds of Central London and soon the English countryside to the north, committing every blade of grass to memory. But within an hour or so, Lucy had fallen asleep with her head resting on Millie's shoulder, her body curled up against the other woman. Jean smiled at how Millie had wrapped her arm protectively around Lucy's shoulders, to keep the jolts of the train from dislodging her.

"I wonder what she dreams of, these days," Jean murmured.

Millie, who had been gazing over the top of Lucy's head and out the window, turned her attention back towards Jean. Lucy's breath rose and fell evenly against Millie, the innocence of her sleeping face making her appear even younger. Her two friends shared a guilty glance, both remembering Lucy's panicked confession once that she saw Mary Lawrence's mangled body in vivid detail every time she closed her eyes. _Trauma_, thought Millie, closing her own eyes and letting the familiar etymologies of words wash over her. _From the old Greek word for "wound," but curious that it should also be so close to the German word for "dream"..._

"Happier things than those times, I hope," she offered after a moment, opening her eyes again.

"Something about seeing her on a train platform again brought it all back very suddenly." Jean shuddered. "It still makes me feel like my innards are shrivelling up inside me, to think that we let her go through that charade, after everything she'd already etched into her mind."

"She volunteered," Millie reminded Jean, more to convince herself than anything else.

"We could have told her no," muttered Jean, one hand tightening around her cane. "Saved her the horror of being assaulted by two separate men in one evening."

Millie sighed.

"She's a grown woman, Jean. She's entitled to make her own decisions."

"Be that as it may, she'll always be one of my girls," Jean replied.

Millie didn't respond, only shifted slightly so that Lucy's cheek rested on a less bony ridge of her shoulder. Jean cracked open a novel that she had brought, and Millie let her mind wander until she too nodded off, her own cheek pressed against Lucy's soft hair.

* * *

Millie didn't wake until the train slowly rolled into its terminus in Glasgow Central. Lucy's eyelids fluttered open first, and Millie unwillingly allowed herself to be roused as Lucy slowly pulled away and rubbed at a crick in her neck.

"Welcome to Scotland," Jean announced. "Lucy, if you'll get my bag, I'll take care of finding us a ride to my cousin's..."

By the time Millie and Lucy had collected the bags, Jean had already made her way to the front of the station and was negotiating with a cab driver in such rapid Glasgow patter that even a linguist as adept as Millie could only pick up the occasional word here and there. She and Lucy stood helplessly by until Jean finally turned to them and asked them to load the bags into the boot.

"I should warn you that my cousin Fiona is... well, you'll see," Jean sighed as the cab sputtered through the city centre towards Hyndland.

"Is she very much like you?" Lucy asked.

"I certainly hope not, and to hell with whatever our granddad's opinion on that count was," grumbled Jean.

Millie caught Lucy's eye and winked.

"Well, she certainly seems to have done well for herself," Millie noted, admiring the stately sandstone tenements that lined the streets under the darkening grey sky.

"Married well for herself," Jean corrected Millie. "He's dead now. Cancer."

The cab pulled to a stop in front of a grand townhouse, and the three women stepped out and retrieved their bags.

"Well, here goes," Jean muttered, and she made her way up to the front door and rang the bell sharply.

When the door opened, Millie had to suppress a snort of laughter.

"Well, well, well," sniffed Fiona, who bore a truly startling resemblance to her cousin, in a somewhat bonier and decidedly haughtier manner. "It's been a long time, Jean."

"Fiona," said Jean politely, leaning in to plant a perfunctory kiss on her cousin's powdered cheek. "Glad to see you looking so well."

"Hmm." Fiona cast a critical glance at Jean's cane. "I wish I could say the same. You all had better come inside."

The inside of Fiona's home was clearly the poshest residence Lucy had ever visited, given the way her eyes widened at the fine furniture and marble busts and walnut grand piano. She and Millie lingered in the hallway by the front door, unsure of where to go.

"Into the sitting room, please, there's no point in standing there all day," Fiona ordered. "I didn't realise there would be so many of you."

"Plans changed a little." Jean shrugged. "Happens in business travel sometimes, as you well know. I hope it won't put you through too much trouble?"

"Well, we'll make do." Fiona finally extended a hand to Millie. "Fiona MacDonald."

"Camilla Harcourt," Millie replied formally, holding her chin up a little higher. "And this is Lucy Davis."

"How d'you do?" Lucy added, bobbing into a small curtsey.

Fiona nodded in return with just the slightest touch of a smirk.

"And you're all librarians, how charming," she said, sitting down on a richly upholstered chair.

"Yes, Millie's part of our translation division, and Lucy's in cataloguing," Jean said crisply, sitting down on an adjacent chair. "We're meeting with some of the archivists at the Mitchell over the next few days."

"I see." Fiona cast a critical eye on the trio. "Well, Jean didn't say how long you'd be in Glasgow, but I should warn you that I'm going north at the end of the week. It's the big annual ceilidh at Craig Castle, and I told Esmé that of course I wouldn't miss it for the world..."

"Not Esmé Beaufort-Stuart?" Millie cut in casually.

Fiona arched a pencilled eyebrow.

"You know her?"

"Not personally," Millie explained. "But I knew her daughter when we were both at school in Switzerland."

"_Were_ you?" Fiona's interest clearly was piqued, and she cast an approving second glance over Millie. "Lovely girl. Disappeared during the war, you know. Presumed dead."

"Oh." Millie's voice had gone very quiet. "No, I didn't know. We'd fallen out of touch by then."

Lucy quietly reached a hand over to Millie's and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"In any event, you're welcome to stay until I leave for Aberdeenshire on Friday," Fiona continued. "I have social events that should keep me out late every night you're here, so I'll leave the extra set of keys with Jean. Would you like some tea, or shall I show you to your rooms? Two of you will have to share, I'm afraid."

"Rooms, I think," Jean said. "We really should talk over our schedule for the next few days, before we turn in for the night. Early morning tomorrow."

"Thank you, though," Millie added.

The two guest bedrooms were across the hall from one another on the second floor of the townhouse. Lucy brought Jean's bag to the room that looked out onto the road, while Millie set herself up in the one that looked back over the yard.

"So we're to be librarians this week?" Lucy asked, sitting down on the edge of Jean's bed.

"Millie, shut the door behind you, will you?" Jean said, taking a seat in the chair next to the vanity, and Millie slipped inside the room and closed the door. "Yes, dear. We spoke with Ben, and asked him to keep the news of the Magro ring's arrest as quiet as possible. The local police have been warned that we're here and that they should refrain from acting until we've confirmed Eliška's whereabouts, and can guarantee that she'll be returned to safety. There's a good chance this Tommy and his friends have been tipped off already about the Magros' arrest, through informal networks, but they have no way of knowing that _we_ know they were in cahoots with Marta. Still, we need to give them as little opportunity and reason as possible to pack up and move shop."

"Hence the reason we're here," Millie added, sitting down next to Lucy on the bed. "It's clear that at least some of the hotels in Glasgow are run by people with connections to the Magros. So it seemed safer to stay elsewhere, especially if anyone caught on to why we were actually in town."

"Even if it means staying with an insufferably snobbish social climber like Fiona," Jean muttered, shaking her head.

"Dare I inquire about your past?" Millie grinned.

"She was the ambitious one, and I was the clever one." Jean shrugged. "Not much more to it. A lot of old resentments built up over a childhood's worth of comparison, although we manage to keep things civil and relatively impersonal these days. Our granddad used to always say that we both had personalities that were all sharp corners; I suppose we're more similar in that respect than I like to admit."

Lucy suddenly let out a gasp.

"I just realised!" she giggled. "Why Fiona seemed so familiar, I mean. You were pretending to be her, when we met with Marta Magro!"

"A bit, yes," sighed Jean. "Well, quite a lot, actually. Fiona's husband actually _was_ a ship's purser for the Navy, and I suspect some deals probably _were_ made on the side during his Navy days, as so often happens with those types. That's where I got that cover story, at any rate. The safest characters to play are usually the ones whose histories we know like the backs of our hands—less risk of mixing up details later on. Although I'm sure that Fiona wouldn't appreciate at all my using her life history as a cover while purchasing illicit goods from Maltese smugglers. Millie, you have the address for this hotel?"

"The Aldergale, yes."

"Lucy?"

Jean handed Lucy a map and gestured for Millie to hand over the scrap of paper on which she'd written the hotel's address. Lucy scanned both briefly, then nodded.

"Best not to carry too much evidence on us, in case we're intercepted," Jean explained, tearing up the scrap of paper. "Oh, and Lucy, one more item for you..."

Jean pulled from her bag a Slovak dictionary and handed it to Lucy.

"Not that Millie's ability to communicate using her Russian isn't incredibly impressive, but if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to memorise what you can, so that we can ask about specifics?"

Lucy nodded seriously, holding the dictionary to her chest.

"Right," Jean concluded. "We should all get some rest. Lucy, do you want to wash up first?"

Lucy nodded, then slid off the edge of the bed and pattered to the door and out of the room, the dictionary clutched in one arm. Millie stood to close the door behind her younger friend, smiling.

"I hope you don't mind the sleeping arrangements?" Jean asked with a slight frown as she turned towards the vanity's mirror and pulled a pin from her thick hair.

"Wouldn't be the first time," Millie shrugged. "Back when she stayed with me, I mean, when her nightmares were still so intense. She'd sometimes crawl under the covers with me, just so she wouldn't have to face her own thoughts alone."

Jean's reflection in the vanity mirror was looking at Millie with concern.

"They got much better," Millie added hastily. "I don't think she'd have moved out, if they hadn't."

"Well, that's good to know." Jean placed her last hairpin on the vanity before her and fished in her bag for a brush, her long hair draping around her face. "I was sorry to hear about your friend, by the way."

"Oh, that." Millie sighed. "Hadn't thought about her in years. She was at a boarding school near my finishing school; we met on a ski trip in the Alps, one winter. Probably hit it off like we did because she also was a linguist—French and German, like me. Her French was loads better than mine was, but I actually think she rather admired me. Fancy that."

Jean didn't turn to face Millie from where she sat brushing her hair, but Millie still caught a flicker of a smile cross Jean's face from her reflection in the mirror.

"Well, there's very little that I can do to endear myself to my cousin, at this late stage in our lives, but implying that you brushed elbows with the Scottish aristocracy in Switzerland certainly raised her estimation of you. If she's insensitive enough to bring it up again, I hope it won't be too painful for you."

"Jean," laughed Millie wearily, "by now, I'm more surprised to hear that people have survived the war than the alternative."

"I know," said Jean, "but that still doesn't make it any easier, does it."

"Done," Lucy announced, cracking the door open and peering her freshly washed face around it.

"Thanks, darling, be there in a minute," Millie called. "Good night, Jean."

"Get some rest," Jean said kindly as Millie slipped out into the hallway.

* * *

Because Jean thought it so important to couch any deceit in a degree of truth, the trio went to the Mitchell the next morning, just to be able to credibly describe the place if anyone questioned their purpose for being in Glasgow. Millie wasn't used to seeing the ever-sensible Jean express anything like wonder, but the librarian's demeanour was positively reverent as they made their way through the building.

"One of the finest public libraries in the country, if not all of Europe," she breathed to Millie as they walked through the cavernous reading room. "And their rare books collection! I'd give my good leg to spend an hour with some of those volumes..."

"Really a good thing we came on this business trip, isn't it, Luce?" Millie said cheekily as they watched Jean wander towards the reference librarian's desk and begin to interrogate her about some of the records in the archives.

"I think so," said Lucy earnestly, absent-mindedly pulling a volume off of a shelf and flipping through it. "Millie."

Millie peered over Lucy's shoulder.

"Brilliant, you," she breathed. "Let's see if we can get that reference librarian to help us deepen our research."

Jean had already become fast friends with Ellen, the striking, red-haired reference librarian, by the time Millie and Lucy joined to ask about the whereabouts of the rest of the municipal records relating to local buildings and fire safety codes. A few hours of archival excavation later, and the team had the information they needed. Soon enough, they found themselves wandering down a dingy street just around the corner from the Aldergale Hotel.

"Let's not all go in together," Millie reasoned. "That way, if something goes wrong right now, a fresh face can appear tomorrow to try again."

"Yes," Jean agreed. "So, who first?"

"I'll go," said Lucy after a moment.

"You’re sure?" asked Millie.

"I can quote the codes at the hotel manager," Lucy reasoned. "And I can get a quick read of the place. I looked at the building's architectural plan in the city records and so know everything that's in the file, except for the page that was missing. Besides, I'm probably the least memorable of the three of us."

"Lucy Davis, I never again want to hear you or anyone else imply that you're not incredibly memorable," snapped Jean.

"Don't do anything too dangerous, you hear?" Millie warned Lucy in a low voice.

"I won't do anything that you wouldn't do," Lucy promised.

"Darling, if it begins to sound like something I _would_ do, you absolutely shouldn't do it," Millie laughed.

"We'll come after you if you're not out in twenty minutes," Jean told her.

The Aldergale was an old, shabby building that may have been glamourous sometime in the previous century, but now was all peeling paint and chipped plaster. A fine coat of dust lay over everything in the foyer except the floor, and Lucy nearly sneezed when she pulled open the front door and stepped inside, her notebook in hand.

" 'Lo?" she called softly.

A ruddy-faced man with prominent eyes and a bristly moustache was writing in a ledger at the receptionist counter of the hotel.

"Who're you?" he grunted, not looking at Lucy.

"I'm here about the fire inspection," Lucy said. _Pretend you're someone more confident_, she told herself. _Pretend you're Millie, or Jean._ She stood up a little straighter as she took a few steps forward.

The man at the counter frowned at her and closed his ledger, pushing it to the side of the counter next to the gramophone.

"What fire inspection?" he insisted.

"It's come to our attention that the Aldergale hasn't been inspected for compliance with municipal fire safety standards and regulations," Lucy insisted. "As a public accommodation, it may be subject to periodic inspection by local fire-fighting authorities under Section 1(1)(d) of the Fire Services Act 1947..."

"I'm busy," the man interrupted.

"Is there a more convenient time during which we can follow up?" Lucy asked innocently. "It won't take more than fifteen minutes, I promise. And it'll save both of us loads of paperwork down the line."

The man narrowed his eyes at Lucy, but he stood and led the way into the hotel. The corridors were dimly lit and the carpeted floors creaked beneath Lucy's feet.

"How many storeys?" she asked, taking notes on her pad as they walked.

"Four," the man replied. "No cellar."

"And electrical wiring throughout?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Hmm." Lucy idly pushed down on a door handle as she passed it. "And all of the doors can be unlocked from the inside, yes?"

The man wheeled about and glared at Lucy, his eyes darting quickly to the door and back.

"Don't do that," he growled.

"What?"

"Press down on the door handles like that." After a moment, he added, "Might disturb the patrons."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Lucy said, glancing at the room number. "The locks?"

"Why's it matter?"

"We need to make sure that patrons who are in their rooms can get out safely in the event of an emergency, even if the doors are locked."

The man didn't respond. Lucy made another note on her notepad.

"We may need to follow up on this," Lucy said, kneeling down to examine the keyhole. When she peered through, she was startled to see an eye staring straight back at her, but she did her best not to jump and instead acted as if she were examining the make of the door handle and lock.

"_Si tu?_" Lucy said quietly to the eye on the other side of the door, frantically trying to remember any of the Slovak that she'd read the previous evening.

"_Áno_," the eye replied in a whisper.

"What was that?" snarled the man, seizing Lucy by the shoulders and slamming her back up against the door so that her notepad and pencil fell to the ground.

"I—I was thinking aloud," Lucy stammered. "About what a good thing it is that we do these inspections in situ."

The man released Lucy's shoulders, and she fell to the ground. Her hands were shaking so much that it took her a moment to pick up her pencil and notepad.

"Out," the man growled.

"I'll have to send someone back to finish the inspection," Lucy insisted, her voice trembling.

"I'll bloody the nose of the next sod who tries," the man snapped. "Get the hell out."

Lucy needed no second bidding. Still shaking, she walked quickly out the door.

"Oh goodness, Lucy." Jean inhaled sharply as Lucy came back around the corner. "You're pale as a sheet. What's happened?"

Lucy opened her mouth to say something, and burst into tears instead.

"Dear..." Jean wrapped her arms around the sobbing girl. "You're all right now. Deep breaths."

"Did he hurt you?" Millie asked, her mouth hardening into a tight line.

"More scared me," Lucy stammered through her sobs. "That's it, I'm just startled, I just..."

Millie's mouth trembled as she watched Lucy's hand unconsciously move towards her throat.

"It's just not the first time a man's done that to you," she sighed, wishing that Harry were standing before her so that she could knock his teeth out. "Jean, let's get her home."

Not until Lucy was tucked into bed back at Fiona's did Millie venture to ask Lucy what she'd learned from her time in the Aldergale.

"She whispered back and forth with someone who spoke Slovak," Millie said, closing the door of Jean's room behind her. "Damn it, I wish we'd thought to call the police earlier."

"Well, this Tommy's not a complete idiot, he'll have moved Eliška someplace else, now that he suspects that someone's looking for her." Jean sat back in her chair with a huff. "Back to square one, it is. We'll have to think of some way to trace where he's put her." She glanced at Millie. "How is she?"

"Still shaky. Can't blame her, poor thing, after everything she's been through." Millie leaned back against the door frame. "I'm sorry, Jean. Here I kept telling you to stop fussing, and only a day later, I go ahead and let her wander straight into danger like that."

"She's no more your responsibility than she is mine," Jean chided Millie gently.

"I know, I know..."

Millie's usually steady voice caught, and she shut her eyes tight, her arms wrapped around her front.

"Millie?" Jean said softly.

"Sometimes," Millie said quietly, without opening her eyes, "I dream that I'm still locked in that hotel. Only it's not just Eliška who's working there, it's also Lucy, and Lizzie. And halfway through the dream, Lazzru comes to get me, and he brings me to Marta, and she tells me to open the door in front of me or else she'll kill the girls working in the hotel. And I stand there, paralysed, because I know what's on the other side of the door and I don't want to see it."

A tear that had been gathering in Millie's inky lashes finally broke free and snaked its way down her cheek, coming to rest at the corner of her bright red mouth. Jean waited patiently for Millie to continue.

"I know that Jasper's on the other side of that door," Millie finished finally, her eyes opening to meet Jean's and her voice escaping from her in a soft rasp. "The way we found him. But he's not the only one. Also Alice. And you. And..."

Millie's voice faltered over the one name that was still too painful for her to speak aloud.

"I keep thinking, what might have happened to any of you, if Marta's gang had decided to get to me by hurting more of the people I care about?" she finished. "That's what terrifies me the most, knowing that any of you might have gotten kidnapped or tortured or killed because of my stupidity. And now here Lucy's gotten hurt because of something that was my fault, to begin with..."

"Oh, Millie, dear." Jean pushed herself up from the chair in which she sat and limped slowly across the room. As Millie broke down in tears, Jean gently guided her over to the bed and sat her down.

"I'm so sorry," Millie repeated, brushing at her tears with one hand. "And now, to be falling apart like this..."

"Stop apologising," Jean ordered. "I know you try to be strong all the time, for Lucy's sake. You don't have to be, not right now."

"_You_ always are," Millie sniffed.

"It's my duty to be strong for you girls, even if the government isn't paying me for it anymore. And believe me, more days than not, I'm only just barely holding the façade together with pieces of Sellotape."

Millie let out a choked laugh.

"We all chose to be here, even knowing the risk," Jean reminded her softly. "Lucy got on that train because she wants to help find Eliška just as much as you do. So I want you to stop blaming yourself for things that you can't control."

Millie nodded, and when she was overcome by a fresh wave of tears, Jean wrapped an arm around her and rubbed Millie's shoulder until her sobs had calmed down.

"You'll be all right?" Jean asked.

"Yes," sighed Millie. "Need to think over how to go about things tomorrow."

"Well, I'll be up for a while longer. Knock if you need anything."

"Thanks, I will." Millie slowly pushed herself to her feet and walked to the door. "By the way, your granddad was dead wrong, about your being all sharp corners. Just in case no one had ever told you."

"Thank you, dear," said Jean quietly.

Lucy had been dozing, but when Millie climbed into their bed, she jolted awake and sat up, disoriented.

"Lucy?" Millie asked, alarmed.

"Oh, Millie." Lucy's breathing was sharp. "It's you. I thought..."

"You're all right, darling." Millie took Lucy's hand in her own. "I'm right here."

"Thank goodness," Lucy sighed.

And Millie responded by gathering Lucy in her arms and holding the poor girl until she finally stopped trembling and fell back asleep.

* * *

There were dark rings under Millie's eyes the next morning, but her mouth was set in a grimly determined line as the trio sat down on the bus towards Central Glasgow. Lucy was even quieter than usual, but she seemed somewhat recovered from the events of the previous day. The young eidetiker kept on sneaking small smiles at Jean, who, in an effort to cheer Lucy up, had dressed in full Fiona-inspired attire, complete with a dash of Millie's lipstick and a fur-lined coat that Jean hadn't _exactly_ asked Fiona's permission to borrow from the coat closet.

"It's uncanny, really," Lucy said finally. "You two could be twins."

"I'm not sure that's a compliment, dear, but I won't take offence," sniffed Jean, and Lucy giggled. "How are we going to handle things today, then?"

"We should just call the police," Lucy suggested.

"Won't do any good," said Millie listlessly, "he'll have moved her out by then, and the police won't find anything. Besides, if they _do_ arrest him, and he refuses to talk, then who knows what'll become of Eliška? She could be trapped for days on end, without food or water, if no one else knows where she's hidden."

"So what _are_ we going to do, then?" Jean asked. "Millie?"

"Eliška left me a message the last time they moved her," Millie reasoned. "She might have done so again."

"Well, we can't go back in parading as fire inspectors," Jean sighed. "Lucy, you saw the architectural plans—any ideas on how to get inside the building?"

"I could pick the locks," Lucy offered.

"No," Millie said firmly. "Too dangerous, not when we have no sense of who might be on watch. We need to get in the building with permission, and to have a good look around while we're there. Lucy, what room number was she in?"

"Room 28," Lucy replied.

"What side of the building?"

"Er, second door to the right off the landing? Western side."

"Right," said Millie. "That should be enough. If Tommy really has moved Eliška out, he should have at least one room available for a lodger down on their luck. I'll just have to offer to fill it, won't I."

No one was at the front desk when Millie pushed open the door of the Aldergale, but she had only taken two steps across the foyer when a man stomped down a hallway and behind the desk.

"What do you want?" he snapped at Millie.

"A room, if you have one," Millie replied.

The man snorted, looking Millie up and down.

"For a toff like you? Unlikely."

"I was told you might have something I could afford," Millie insisted, kicking herself for letting her Swiss finishing school sense of entitlement blaze so brightly. "I promise you that whatever you can offer won't be the roughest place I've ever lived," she added, which was very true.

The man was eyeing Millie suspiciously.

"What's your name?"

"I mind my own business, you mind yours, no questions asked, and we'll get along fine," Millie told him curtly. "May I see your available rooms?"

Glowering, the man led the way up the creaking steps. Millie followed him, glancing at the open door of Room 28 as they passed it and continued up to the fourth storey.

"Here," he said, pushing open a door. Millie stepped inside and examined its spartan stylings, not so unlike the bedrooms in Marta's Mulgrave Hotel.

"Do you have anything with a western exposure?" Millie asked casually. "Only I sometimes get headaches from the morning sun."

"That's what curtains are for, aren't they," sniffed the man. "Loo's down the hall. Take it or leave it."

"Thanks," said Millie, and she followed him back down the stairs.

A lean man was waiting in the foyer.

"We need to talk," he hissed at the hotel owner, shooting Millie a sharp glare.

"Not now," muttered the hotel owner.

"Hang on," Millie interrupted loudly, "I think I left my handkerchief upstairs, will just pop back up and get it, if that's all right..."

Before either man could tell her no, she dashed back up the stairwell and quickly darted into Room 28, quietly pulling the door closed behind her and praying that the men below would be distracted by their conversation for a good long while.

The room was sparsely furnished, with only a plain bed and a chair and small table. Millie glanced at all of the walls, peered at the windowpane, looked at both sides of the curtains, peeled back the rumpled blanket and sheets, knelt down to look under the bed, unsuccessfully tried to pry a mirror from the back of the door. Under the pillow, she discovered a photograph of Eliška and Branka together, which at least confirmed that Eliška _had_ been there, but both the verso and the pillowcase were blank. There wasn't much else on which to write a message.

"Come on, Millie," she scolded herself, "_think_."

And that was when Millie spotted a glass of water on the windowsill, half-hidden by a curtain, with a curious little folded piece of paper floating about halfway towards the bottom of the glass. Millie had just finished fishing the paper out when she heard voices outside the door.

"Well, even if she's swallowed the anchor, she still knows about the A&AS," said the lean man's voice as the door opened and Millie dove under the bed. "What're you going to do about that?"

"She'll never tell anyone else," scoffed the hotel owner, whose shoes were only inches from Millie's face. "It'd cost her far more than she's willing to gamble, not given where she is now."

"You sound bloody confident about that, Tommy..."

"I have the power to destroy her ten times over," Tommy boasted. "And she knows it, she'll stay _tikhiy_, as it were. If anything happens, I'll handle it. Right, anything left in here that we need to get rid of, just in case anyone else comes nosing about?"

Millie all but held her breath as two pairs of shoes paced about the little room.

"Convenient that she didn't have anything to begin with," chuckled the lean man. "Let's lock this one up, then, before the toff comes back down?"

_Damn it_, thought Millie as she considered the sheer drop down multiple storeys to the pavement. Before she could convince herself it was a terrible idea, she rolled out from under the bed, scrambled to her feet, and dashed to the door.

"You...!"

Tommy and his friend hurtled around the end of the bed after Millie, who threw herself out onto the landing and raced for the stairs. She leaped down them multiple steps at a time, the two men thundering after her, and sprinted for the door of the hotel.

A crack sounded behind Millie, and something grazed her right shoulder. Gritting her teeth, she bounded out the door, ducking just as another bullet whizzed past her head.

"Run," she hissed at Lucy as she rounded the corner where Lucy and Jean were waiting concernedly.

"Oh, but," Lucy said, turning towards Jean.

"_Go_," Jean ordered her, and Lucy raced after Millie, the two splitting up and dashing down opposite alleyways, just as the two men raced panting around the corner, guns still brandished.

"She went that way," Tommy called, gesturing towards the alleyway that Millie had taken, and the lean man rushed in that direction. Jean tried to avoid making eye contact with Tommy, but he trudged straight up to her and shoved the muzzle of his gun between her eyes.

"Well, well," he snarled at Jean, who had frozen still as a statue. "I was wondering if you'd show up eventually. By reputation, you're not the type to drop an order all standing like that."

"I—I tried to follow through," Jean replied, mouth dry. "There were... complications."

"I'll say," Tommy sneered. "You're no good to me with your brains blown out, so come back to the hotel tomorrow evening, and let's discuss what you still owe like civilised people, hmm? You know what the consequences will be, if you say no."

Jean nodded mutely, and Tommy pulled the muzzle of his gun away and began loping up the street after his partner. Only then did Jean realise how much she was shaking and collapse against the wall of the building next to her, her cane falling from her hand. Lucy found her there a few minutes later, once it seemed that the coast was clear.

"You all right?" she asked, reaching down to give Jean a hand back to her feet.

"Yes, dear," gasped Jean, wincing as she put too much weight on her bad leg. "Millie?"

"Gave those two the slip, but I don't know where she is now. I followed them back to the hotel; they seem to have given up, for the moment." Lucy picked up Jean's cane and put a hand under her arm to help support her weight. "D'you think she'll go back to Fiona's?"

Jean shook her head, still too shaken to speak clearly.

"Library," she said, and Lucy nodded.

As Jean had predicted, Millie was lounging on a bench outside of the Mitchell Library, smoking. To any passing observer, she would have appeared the picture of indifference, but Lucy noticed how Millie's free hand was clenched, how a brown stain was spreading across the right shoulder of her teal blouse.

"Hello," Millie called casually as her friends approached, Lucy still holding Jean steady under one elbow.

"Are you all right?" Lucy asked, biting her lip anxiously.

"Me?" Millie glanced at her shoulder. "Just grazed. Stings a little, but everything seems fine."

"Let me run inside and see if Ellen has any bandages on hand," Lucy fretted, and before either of her friends could say anything, she dashed into the building in search of the reference librarian.

The instant Lucy disappeared, Millie exhaled heavily, her breath catching a little.

"I haven't been able to stop shaking," she confessed to Jean in a low voice. "Christ, what a mess. You all right?"

Jean, unable to meet Millie's eyes, opened her mouth and then closed it again.

"Tommy knew who I was," Jean managed finally, in a quavering voice that did not sound like her own. "My alias for Marta, at least. Would make sense, I suppose, for her to warn one of her Glaswegian middlemen that a wealthy Scottish woman with a cane was waiting on a big order and had only paid half down. He wants me to pay up, tomorrow evening. Threatened to shoot me, if I didn't."

Jean's lower lip quivered, and her grip on her cane tightened.

"I hate that the thought of being shot again scares me so much," she whispered.

"Oh, Jean."

Millie looked at her former supervisor in concern as the older woman closed her eyes and forcefully swallowed a sob. Then she gently placed a hand on Jean's back, and left it there until Lucy returned.

"Did you find anything, at least?" Lucy asked, carefully placing a few large plasters from the reference librarians' first aid kit over the shallow gash in Millie's shoulder.

"Maybe," laughed Millie grimly. She pulled from her pocket the little folded piece of paper. "It was floating in a glass of water in the room. Too crumpled and wadded to read now, although I suspect she wouldn't have placed it in water, if she wanted us to read anything off of it."

"A pentagon?" Jean asked, peering at the shape.

"A star!" Lucy exclaimed. "You can pop the sides of the paper inwards, when the paper's dry, and it turns into a little star."

"But what does it all mean?" Millie furrowed her brow in thought. "Why drop a paper star into a glass of water?"

The three women pondered this mystery for a moment.

"I believe Shakespeare refers to the moon as 'the watery star,' but I somehow doubt that Eliška's had much time to brush up on her English-language classics since arriving in the Isles," said Jean wryly, something of her usual unflappable manner finally returning.

"A watery star," repeated Lucy. "A star in the water. Oh! But that seems too easy."

"What?" Millie asked.

"A starfish," said Lucy simply. "That's the first thing that comes to my mind."

Millie was about to laugh, but Jean inhaled sharply.

"Good girl, Lucy," she muttered. "But how could Eliška have known, unless she overheard someone saying it...?"

"Talking about a starfish?" Millie asked, annoyed that her brain was moving more slowly than everyone else's. _Compound word_, she thought to herself, _would be easy enough for anyone to put together who knew the English words for "star" and "fish"..._

"Starfish sites," Jean explained. "Code named 'Q sites' officially, but the nickname caught on and stuck. After Coventry, the military set up large, elaborate decoys of lights outside of cities, so that if the Germans tried to bomb during the night, they'd mistake the lights of the decoys for the actual cities. There must have been at least one near Glasgow."

In one motion, the three women turned towards the Mitchell.

"Well, we're here already, might as well," sighed Millie.

Within an hour, the team had collected an impressive amount of information on where Starfish sites around Glasgow had previously been located.

"The problem is, there's no way we can search all nine sites efficiently, without asking the police to get involved and risking some degree of escalation," Jean muttered as they left the library. "We'll have to choose carefully, then. Where to start?"

Millie was scowling pensively off into the distance.

"You've clearly got something on your mind, Millie, so you might as well say it," Jean sighed.

"You won't like it," Millie warned her.

Jean shrugged brusquely.

"Didn't you say earlier that Tommy told you to meet with him tomorrow?" Millie reminded her. "Maybe there's a way to use your alias to find a way to get out of him which Starfish site he's using to hide Eliška."

"Yes, maybe," said Jean shortly.

"He and his friend were saying loads of very cryptic stuff to each other, before they caught me sneaking out of Eliška's room," Millie continued. "Something about her 'swallowing the anchor,' and an acronym or something called 'A&AS'—Tommy was saying that she couldn't tell anyone about A&AS because she knew it was too risky, that he'd destroy her if she did. Said she'd stay '_tikhiy_,' which is Russian for 'quiet,' and I assume it's the same or something very similar in Slovak. Might want to try to figure out what all the rest meant."

Jean didn't say anything, only continued to limp forward without looking at Millie. Millie sighed. It really was unnerving to see Jean so rattled—Jean, who had likely done things during the war that Millie never could and never would know about, who always seemed so _certain_ about what was sensible and what was not.

"Do you think she'll be all right?" Lucy asked Millie warily.

"She's just working through some emotions," Millie replied quietly. "She had a bit of a scare earlier."

Lucy blinked.

"Jean gets scared?"

"Of course she does, she just tries not to be upset in front of you." Upon seeing the startled look on Lucy's face, Millie put a reassuring hand on the younger woman's shoulder. "But don't worry about her, Lucy. That's the last thing she wants, is for you to worry about her. She'll be fine."

Lucy gave Millie a small, serious nod as Jean finally tapped her way slowly back to her friends.

"You're right, of course," Jean said to Millie, without meeting her eyes. "We finish this here. I don't want to have this hanging over my head when I go back home, and if we don't take care of it tomorrow, who knows how long I'll spend looking over my shoulder in London for another one of Marta's cronies to do me in there?"

"Stiff upper lip, Jean," Millie smiled. "Right then, Lucy, any chance you can recall how to get us to Eaglesham from here...?"

* * *

Millie and Lucy both went straight to bed when they got back to Fiona's. They'd spent most of the afternoon tramping about a series of windy fields, searching in vain for where Eliška might be hidden around several former Starfish sites. Jean, however, couldn't sleep. Her leg was causing her more pain than it had in months—whether from recent overuse, or from too many bad memories calling added attention to its aches, she couldn't say. But it was more than that.

Something was bothering Jean, niggling at the back of her mind but slipping out of grasp whenever she turned her attention its way. All day long, she had tried to recall exactly what it was that Tommy had said to her, but every time she went back to that moment, all she could remember was the cold of the gun's muzzle against her forehead, and her mind shut off. Back at Fiona's that night, however, she finally mustered enough courage to go back to that moment and recall everything, including Tommy's words.

_By reputation, you're not the type to drop an order all standing like that._

_By reputation, you're not..._

Ah, of course.

_Code 14. Corruption in the data set._

_Redo calculation from the start._

When she heard Fiona turn the lock in the door, Jean wandered out to greet her, the tap of her cane thudding dully against the carpet in the hallway.

"Well, hello," Fiona said as Jean appeared, locking the door behind her. "I'm surprised to see you up this late—you've all been going to bed so early, we've been like ships passing in the night. Library work going well?"

Jean settled into a chair in the sitting room.

"Yes, things have been busy," she replied briskly. "But I'm glad to catch you alone."

"And I, you." Fiona took a seat in the chair opposite Jean. "Only two more days before I leave town, and this is the first chance we've had to sit back and really talk, in over a decade, probably. You should come back to Scotland more often."

Jean nodded, her heart indescribably heavy.

"Jean? What's the matter?"

"If I asked you what it meant to 'swallow the anchor,' would you be able to tell me?" Jean asked Fiona after a moment.

Fiona smiled.

"Naval slang," she explained. "Referring to giving up your old life at sea and returning to the safety of the shore. Casting off the old tool you've always relied on, as it were."

"I see," said Jean. "And 'A&AS'?"

Fiona's eyebrows raised.

"Another naval term—'alterations and additions to the structure.' What's all this about?"

"Fiona, I want to believe that you're a good person, and you can justify anything that you've done later, but for now, I think you should know that you're in danger."

Fiona's smile became slightly fixed.

"I'm sorry?"

"Earlier today, I had an... encounter, shall we say, with a hotel owner named Tommy." Jean was unsurprised to see Fiona's eyes widen ever so slightly in shock. "He threatened me, said I owed him money. It didn't occur to me until much later that he mentioned that I had _reputation_ for going through with orders. But that implies having _placed_ orders, more than once, which I certainly haven't. And there's only one person in Glasgow, with longstanding connections to the British Navy, for whom I could be quite easily mistaken."

Fiona's fixed smile had turned sharply downwards into a scowl.

"My friend overheard Tommy and one of his cronies discussing how someone had 'swallowed the anchor' but still couldn't risk telling anyone about the 'A&AS.' Tommy said he'd destroy this person if she tried, and she knew that he would." Jean leaned forward towards her cousin. "I want to help you, Fiona. But I can't unless I know what you've done."

Fiona exhaled slowly, smiling humourlessly at Jean.

"It's like Granddad always said," she told Jean bitterly. "You were the clever one, and I was the ambitious one. What can I say, Jean? I made my share of mistakes after the war. What with Gerry dying and in need of medicine, is it really all that surprising that I started working for Tommy's sideline on the black market? Tommy was a midshipman when Gerry first befriended him; he saw potential in a man with fearless personality like that. But he didn't realise how destructive that kind of fearlessness can be, when war takes away a man's moral compass. I don't like to think of what Gerry'd say, if he saw either of us in the positions we're in now."

"But you left it all behind?"

"Not as far behind as I'd hoped, apparently. When Gerry died, I stayed on a few more years, until I'd secured enough wealth to host the appropriate number of lavish parties per year expected of someone of my standing. I knew I'd need powerful friends if I left, for protection, if nothing else. So I cultivated those friendships, and then I told Tommy I was done. He'd assumed that I was in it for the long haul; lost a lot of business when I quit, I imagine. No wonder he's angry."

"And now he wants what he thinks is his, and is willing to blackmail you for it." Jean shook her head. "What a tangled web we weave, Fiona."

"I don't need your lectures," Fiona snapped. "You don't think I feel trapped enough, as it is?"

"I want to help you," Jean repeated. "But before I do, I have to ask you: Did you know about the girl?"

Fiona blinked.

"Look, Jean, whatever you may be presuming about my relationship with Tommy..."

"I frankly don't care about whatever went on between you two," Jean interrupted. "I mean the poor Slovak girl locked in the hotel."

"Poor Slovak girl locked in the hotel?" Fiona's expression slowly changed from one of confusion to one of alarm. "Oh, god."

"I'll take that as a no," said Jean, breathing a soft sigh of relief.

Fiona was eyeing her cousin critically.

"You're not really here to meet with librarians at the Mitchell, are you."

"No," Jean confessed, "although they've been incredibly helpful, to date. My friends and I had a brush with the ring down in London who sold the girl to Tommy. We're trying to get her back, and we think he's moved her from his hotel to one of the Starfish sites around Glasgow. What do you say we find the girl and expose Tommy, before he expects 'you' to meet with him tomorrow evening to pay off your debt?"

* * *

Lucy clearly was on the verge of bursting into laughter when she walked into Fiona's dining room the next morning and found Jean and Fiona, mirror images of one another, conversing in low voices over breakfast.

"Good morning," Lucy said, taking a seat and selecting a scone for herself, Millie trailing in behind her.

"Good morning, dear," Jean replied. "The last site we visited yesterday was Condorrat, correct?"

Lucy, mid-chew, threw an apprehensive glance at Fiona.

"It's all right," Jean said gently, "Fiona knows why we're here. She might be able to help."

"Condorrat, and before that, Paisley and Eaglesham," Lucy recited, swallowing quickly.

Fiona shook her head.

"I'm not familiar with any of those sites," she said.

"Well, what can you tell us?" Jean urged her.

Fiona bit her lip, clearly uncomfortable to divulge the depth of her involvement in front of Lucy and Millie.

"We won't tell anyone that you were involved, at one point," Jean promised. "It would be very bad form for any of us to turn you over to the police, after all, when you've been putting us up for the past few days."

Fiona scowled in annoyance at Jean's dry humour, but she nodded.

"Well, to be honest, Tommy's biggest cache was always the cellar of the Aldergale," she said.

"But the Aldergale doesn't have a cellar," Lucy said, furrowing her brow in confusion. "I checked the architectural plans at the library."

"Ah." Fiona shifted uncomfortably. "During the war, the hotel received a permit to have an air raid shelter dug out underneath it. But after the war, Tommy removed the permit from the public records. With no evidence of the cellar's existence, it was an even more secure cache."

"That would explain the missing page," Lucy nodded.

"But why would Eliška have left us the message that she did, if she weren't being taken to a Starfish site?" Jean asked.

Millie closed her eyes and sighed softly.

"Because she didn't know what a Starfish site was," she reasoned. "She heard Tommy say he was going to do something with her that involved 'Starfish' and left us an appropriate message. But I think we've all read the meaning as wrong as she did."

"What do you mean?" Jean asked, frowning.

"What if Tommy was referring to the Starfish sites, but not because he was going to take Eliška to one?" Millie finally opened her eyes. "What if he was using 'Starfish' as a synonym for 'decoy'?"

Jean breathed in sharply.

"Leaving everything exactly in place while redirecting the enemy's attention elsewhere," she muttered. _Alterations and additions to the structure_—another false assumption, another Code 14. "I think you must be right, Millie. Fiona, how do we get into the cellar?"

"There's a hidden trapdoor, in the foyer. It's difficult to explain how to locate it, but..."

"Can you get us in?"

Fiona nodded, hesitantly at first, then more resolutely.

"Thank you." Jean sighed. "Well, all we'll need then is something to keep Tommy and his gang good and distracted for a while this evening. And I think I can provide that."

* * *

"You're _sure_ you're up to this?" Millie asked Jean for the umpteenth time. The sky was darkening outside, and Millie, seated next to Jean at the vanity, was once more helping her friend put the finishing touches onto her best portrayal of Fiona.

"Run me through the signals again," Jean replied, opening her mouth so that Millie could apply lipstick.

"Opening of Beethoven's Fifth means we've successfully gotten Eliška out of the hotel," Millie recited, carefully drawing colour onto Jean's upper lip, then her lower lip. "Easy enough to remember—Morse code for V, for Victory. Chopin's Funeral March means something's gone wrong and Eliška isn't there—Morse code for Q, in honour of our Starfish sites. Can you remember all that?"

"It'd take more than just a decade of disuse for me to forget Morse code, believe me." Jean rubbed her lips together. "Pass me those earrings?"

Millie did so.

"I still think we should have some sort of signal for you to let us know if you need help," she added to Jean.

"Well, there'd be no way for me to signal to you that wouldn't be dead obvious to Tommy," Jean replied. "Besides, Fiona said that, if I needed to end the conversation quickly, I could just tell Tommy that I'd ask Gerry's old gang to help me pay up the rest, and he'd be satisfied with that for the moment."

Millie knew that that line sounded as flimsy to Jean as it did to her. She bit her lip.

"Jean, has it ever occurred to you that she's setting you up?"

"What do you mean, 'setting me up'?" Jean scowled into the mirror at Millie's reflection.

"Letting you take the potential fall for something she's done," Millie said bluntly. "Yes, I know she's helping us rescue Eliška, and I'm very grateful for that. But surely it hasn't slipped your notice that, if Tommy decides to exact some kind of vengeance tonight, you're the one who's going to suffer for it?"

Jean sighed, her gaze falling to the top of the vanity.

"I know," she said quietly. "But what choice do we have? I don't know where the trapdoor to the cellar is; Fiona does. It's a risk we'll have to take." She cleared her throat and put on one of the earrings. "Besides, I may not _like_ Fiona much, but I trust her. We are family, after all."

"You can't always trust your family," Millie grumbled.

"Well, I do," Jean replied sharply. She put on the other earring, then pressed her hands down on the top of the vanity, still not looking at Millie. "I lost everyone else in my family during the war, in one manner or another. If I can't trust the only relative I have left, who _can_ I trust?"

Millie didn't answer Jean, only reached over and gently tugged at her strand of pearls so that they hung evenly.

"You'll be fine," she said very softly, to convince herself that it was true. "If your performance is anything close to the one you put on for Marta, you'll be just fine."

"You forget that I had you two with me for support then." Jean finally glanced sideways. "Millie, I want you to promise me that, even if something happens to me..."

"Nothing's going to happen to you," Millie insisted, trying not to remember how Jean had whimpered in pain on Oliver Masters' floor as Millie helplessly held her.

"Even if something happens to me," Jean repeated, "you won't stay and try to help. I want you and Lucy to find Eliška, and get out as fast as possible."

"Are you mad?" Millie scoffed. "This entire situation is _my_ fault, Jean! I'm not going to let you martyr yourself for my cause."

"Our cause," Jean corrected her. "And I'd rather be the only casualty, if there has to be any. Besides, much as I know our Lucy can take care of herself, and much as I like this Ben Gladstone, I'd feel better knowing that you were out there keeping an eye on her, just in case. Promise?"

"All right, fine," sighed Millie after a moment.

"Thank you." Jean looked back at the mirror and studied her reflection critically. "I know I was very harsh with you when you reappeared, for getting mixed up with the Magros in the first place, and I'm sorry for that. But you can't imagine how worried we were. Something dreadful happening to you, or to Lucy or Alice or... well, _that_ frightens me so much more than anything that could possibly happen to me."

Millie looked at Jean in her lipstick and pearls, sitting as upright and unyielding as a soldier. And maybe that wasn't surprising, Millie reflected, since Jean _had_ been a general, after a fashion, barking orders that would send troops marching across Europe. It was only reasonable that Jean, like any other sensible person, would be petrified about what she was about to do. But fear had never been enough to break Jean McBrien, not during the war, and not now.

"We can still squash this whole operation," Millie reminded her. "Hop the next train home, forget all of this."

Jean smiled wanly, then tucked into her purse the same stack of bills that they once had given Marta Magro in payment for uncustomed cigarettes. (Lucy had found the money stashed in a drawer of Marta's desk at the Mulgrave Hotel, and quietly reclaimed the lot without Ben noticing.)

"I told you, dear, I don't want to have to bring any part of this nonsense back to London with me," Jean said. "Except for Eliška, of course."

* * *

Jean needed no second bidding when Millie offered her another swig of "Dutch courage" as they waited around the corner from the Aldergale.

"Not _too_ much, Jean—we're trying to stage a rescue mission!" Millie scolded her erstwhile supervisor, tugging the flask back.

"If I'm going to get shot again, I intend to be as numb to the experience as possible," Jean argued back in a hiss.

"I do wish we could bring the police into this," Lucy fretted.

"We promised Fiona we wouldn't get her into any trouble," Millie reminded her softly. "And we'll make do on our own, we always have."

"Time to go," Fiona said, glancing at her watch. "Jean..."

Jean raised her eyebrows at her cousin, who was wringing her hands anxiously.

"Good luck," Fiona finally managed.

The three watched from around the corner as Jean stoically made her way up the street and rang the doorbell of the Aldergale.

"Good of you two gentlemen to meet me," Jean said in a clear voice as the door opened.

"You're sure there won't be reinforcements coming in?" Millie whispered.

Fiona shook her head.

"The few times I met Tommy face-to-face, we'd just meet in the backroom of the hotel, exchange money for goods, no fuss or muss. Never more than one other person, to guard the door to the backroom. And Tommy'd always put on the gramophone in the foyer, loud, so that no one would be able to hear what we were saying over the music, even if they pressed their ear to the door."

"And you're _positive_ you can't see the backroom from the foyer, or vice versa?"

"It's around a corner and down a hall," Lucy confirmed. "As long as we're quiet, anyone standing guard outside the door shouldn't even know that we're there."

"Right." Millie blew a soft sigh out of the corner of her mouth. "Lucy, you've got one of Jean's hairpins, and the oil? Let's go, then."

Glancing both ways, the three women darted out from behind the corner and to the side door of the hotel. Millie took the oil from Lucy and swabbed the rusty hinges of the door; Fiona glanced about nervously as she held a torch to the lock so that Lucy could pick it. Within a few minutes, they were inside. Fiona gestured to Millie and Lucy, and the three crept through a service corridor and up to the second floor.

"Not moved back," Millie breathed as they edged very slowly across the landing to avoid making the wood creak. The door to Room 28 was ajar again, and moonlight spilled through it in a slim line of light on the carpet.

"I'll go first," whispered Fiona, and she led the way quietly down the stairs into the foyer.

Jean, meanwhile, had seated herself confidently across from Tommy in the backroom and maintained eye contact with him even as she heard the lean man shut the door behind her with a sharp _click_.

"Well, as you implied when we last met, I'm not here for a social call, am I?"

"Don't get cheeky with me," Tommy said shortly, pulling a gun from a drawer and setting it on the top of his desk. "You know how exactly why you're here, and exactly how much you owe."

"Do I?" Jean quirked her head nonchalantly to one side. "I'd like to hear it from you directly, before I give you anything."

"Shut up," snapped Tommy. "Liam told me that he found out you'd lied about the amount. He said you got over _a hundred thousand rubles_, which is ten times what you told me you got, and that you were promised a hundred thousand more for Green Cheese."

"I... I don't know what you mean," Jean stammered, genuinely bewildered.

"The choice is yours," Tommy shrugged. "If I were you, I'd finish the job. Then I'd pay me my share, and pay it quick. Some rather unpleasant things have been happening recently to traitors like you."

"I beg your pardon?" snapped Jean.

"You didn't hear about what happened in America?" Tommy leered. "Electric chair for both of them. Not pretty stuff. 'Course, they might let you off easier here in Britain, but you never know, considering what you've done..."

"And what's that, exactly?" Jean's mouth had gone very dry.

Tommy stared hard at Jean.

"Sold classified information on our nuclear programmes to a Soviet spy," he said. "Or have you really somehow managed to push the sideline out of your mind, over these past two years?"

Out in the foyer, Frank Sinatra blared from the gramophone as Fiona knelt down and carefully used Jean's hairpin to pry up one edge of an indistinguishable hexagonal tile in the floor behind the counter, revealing a ring. Lucy helped Millie pull the ring upwards to open the trapdoor, and, taking the torch from Fiona, Millie dropped through into the shallow cellar.

"Eliška?" she called softly, shining the torch from side to side in the concrete bunker.

A muffled yelp from a corner had Millie rushing forward, bent almost in two to avoid the low ceiling. Eliška's eyes widened, first with fear, then with amazement, as Millie came into view.

"Hang on, darling," Millie muttered, untying the ropes around Eliška's wrists. "There."

"_Millie_," gasped Eliška as Millie undid her gag, and she flung her arms around her friend.

"_T__y v bezopasnosti_," Millie promised her, not knowing if Eliška could understand the Russian, but confident that she understood the sentiment. "Let's get you out of here..."

Lucy helped pull Eliška out of the trapdoor, and Fiona quickly wrapped a coat around the shivering girl. But before Millie could follow, Fiona suddenly shoved Lucy so that she toppled into Millie and through the trapdoor with a thud. By the time they had righted themselves, Fiona had already thrown open the door of the hotel with a loud bang and pulled Eliška out with her.

"I'll go after them," Lucy whispered. "You stay and help Jean."

"Be careful," Millie replied, and Lucy quickly pulled herself from the trapdoor and slipped out the front door.

Millie, meanwhile, hauled herself out of the trapdoor and stood behind the counter next to the gramophone. She flipped the needle up so that Frank Sinatra's voice stopped very suddenly, making the footsteps approaching down the corridor quite audible. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Millie replaced the record with the designated Beethoven, then flipped the needle down.

In the backroom, Jean was gaping at Tommy.

"Alterations and additions to the structure," she repeated to herself.

"Or anything else you can get on Green Cheese." Tommy lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. "My contact was very pleased with the A&AS information you got him about the Red Angel rockets, at any rate, and I hear you've been just as effective on assignments for others."

"I think there's been a mistake." Jean tried to stand up to leave, but her legs were shaking so much she had to lean on the desk to do so. "Say I were to reach out to Gerry's old gang..."

"You wouldn't be so idiotic, Fiona," Tommy scoffed, putting out his cigarette on the top of the desk a centimetre away from Jean's hand. "Maybe you were able to rifle through Gerry's papers while he lay dying, but none of his Supply mates are going to talk to you about anything. Official Secrets Act, remember? Besides, I've got something potentially better."

"And what's that?" asked Jean.

"Leverage." Tommy leered. "Surely you've heard about that physicist in Bratislava who's been trying to defect from the USSR? I acquired his older daughter when he sent her over to London, and I'm waiting for the younger to arrive sometime soon. He comes over here eventually, we've got one or both of his daughters in our custody, and he'll have no choice but to become an asset."

Jean's head felt light. But a moment later, she heard the opening octaves of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony suddenly blare across the foyer, followed almost immediately by a gunshot and a loud thud.

"_Millie_," shouted Jean, and as Tommy glanced towards the door, she swung her cane into his temple with a sturdy _thwack _like a cricket bat hitting its mark. Tommy fell to the side with a grunt, dazed, and Jean seized his gun off the table. She threw her shoulder into the backroom door so that it burst open, and hobbled down the corridor and around into the foyer as quickly as she could.

Millie stood by the entrance to the trapdoor, breathing heavily. A gun was clutched in her hands, and she held it steadily pointed into the cellar.

"I thought I told you _not_ to hang around and try to come to my rescue," Jean said with a wry smile.

"Jean," Millie shouted with relief over the record. "Oh, thank god. Tripped this idiot as he came 'round the corner, and grabbed the gun from him before he fell through the trapdoor. You took care of the other one?"

"For the moment. Where's Fiona?" Jean demanded, turning off the gramophone.

"Grabbed Eliška and ran. Lucy's following. I assume she's in on it?"

"Not exactly." Jean's face contorted in anger as she pulled Tommy's gun and pointed it down into the cellar towards Liam the lean man. "But she's far more dangerous than we'd realised. You go after them; I'll call the police."

Millie nodded and dashed out the door. Jean glared at Liam, who was still sprawled on the floor of the cellar, afraid to move; then, without setting Tommy's gun down, she yanked the trapdoor up and closed it on Liam's head as he tried to stand.

"That'll do for now," she muttered to herself, stepping onto the trapdoor so that Liam couldn't open it if he tried. Tommy's gun still in her hand and an eye on the entrance into the foyer from the corridor, Jean picked up the phone and dialed the police, drumming her fingers on her cane impatiently as she waited for them to pick up.

Millie, meanwhile, raced down the street.

"Lucy?" she called.

She rounded a corner and saw Fiona's car speeding towards the end of the block. Millie raced towards it, and, to her surprise, it suddenly slowed and rumbled to a halt. As Fiona tried to step out of the car, Millie held up her gun.

"Hands up," she told Fiona, who looked surprised but not afraid. "Lucy, are you there?"

"Right here," called Lucy as she approached from down the street. "Jean?"

"Waiting back at the hotel," Millie said without taking her eyes off Fiona. "The police should be on their way. Terrible time to get a flat, Fiona, what rotten luck for you."

"Funny how that sometimes happens," agreed Lucy, twirling Jean's hairpin between her fingers. She opened the door on the other side of the car for Eliška. "Shall we go meet the police when they arrive?"

* * *

Two days later, Millie found herself back on a train with Lucy seated beside her, only this time the younger woman was wide awake and scanning pages of her Slovak dictionary as fast as she could.

"Lucy, dear, you'll give yourself a headache," Jean scolded her from the seat opposite Millie.

"I'm fine," Lucy said without looking up. "_Si hladný?_"

Eliška, who had been gazing out the window at the green moors of Scotland, looked at Lucy and shook her head with a smile.

"Are you going to explain it all to us?" Millie asked Jean, because the arrests and charges had all happened so fast that she had barely had time to register all of it.

"What I understand of it myself, I suppose." Jean sighed. "It seems Fiona's husband Gerry wasn't exactly a purser anymore, by the time the war rolled around. He was assigned to the Ministry of Supply in 1939, which initially was in charge of supplying equipment to the military. But it also was in charge of military research, and after the war ended, that included atomic weapon development. 'Tube Alloys' was the code name; I'm sure that, even if I heard someone use the term at some point, I assumed it still had something to do with the Navy. I'm still not certain to what extent Gerry was in on Fiona's operations—from what Tommy said to me that evening, it sounds like Fiona was stealing information from even her husband. But it appears Tommy purchased the Aldergale to provide a base for his espionage dealings, and Fiona occasionally worked with him."

Millie nodded, because that much was evident. When the police arrived, they'd found file cabinets in the concrete bunker that were filled with nicked documents, the occasional rendering of a technical schematic, a journal filled with quotes that Fiona had taken down after nights spent chatting over drinks at exclusive parties with loose-tongued military officers and politicians. Enough evidence to implicate Fiona and Tommy's entire spy ring, without even needing to bring Eliška into the equation.

"Fiona had us all wrapped around her finger," Millie murmured. "She tried to use us to get Eliška entirely under her control, without needing to pay Tommy his cut. She was probably counting on him and his sidekick shooting all of us, and then being arrested by the police for murder. If nothing else, they never would have thought to go looking for Fiona ever again, if they'd killed you in her stead, Jean."

"What a dreadful thought," Lucy shivered, her eyes still on her dictionary.

"Well, we outsmarted her." Millie smiled weakly. "Fiona's far more clever than your granddad ever gave her credit for being. But even with a cover story as credible as the one she gave you, she still couldn't best us as a team. There's no point whatsoever in trying to compare the two of you, on any front."

"Thank you for that," Jean said. "I'm relieved that you'd never think me ambitious enough to betray my country, at any rate."

"Knowing the sacrifices you've made for Britain, Jean? Don't make me laugh."

Jean smiled gratefully. Despite the similarities in their appearances, Millie couldn't see how anyone could mistake Jean for Fiona, not when Jean positively radiated steadfastness and loyalty. But then, Millie knew Jean in a way that most of the world didn't. What was clear as day to her and to the other Hut Four girls hadn't been enough to keep Jean from being shot once for supposed subterfuge, after all.

"I suppose I should feel more regretful," Jean sighed. "About Fiona going to prison for who knows how many years now. There's the last of my family gone, lost to an entirely different war."

"I'm sorry," said Millie softly.

"Code 14," said Lucy suddenly, finally looking up from her dictionary.

"What's that, Lucy?" Jean asked.

"False assumption," Lucy replied. "That Fiona was your only family, I mean."

"You're not going to tell me that you and Ellen tracked down my entire family tree from the Mitchell archives behind my back, are you?" Jean chuckled.

"We wouldn't have had the time," Lucy answered earnestly. "But Susan—sorry, Millie—Susan wasn't _always_ right about how things add up, however brilliant a mathematician she is. And when she told the two of you once that none of us had families, she was missing a pattern that should have been quite obvious."

With that, Lucy flipped open her dictionary again and buried her nose back in it. Millie winked at Jean, who smiled back at her girls. And all the while, the train, its wheels spinning like a Bombe's rotors, sped its way back towards the stability and predictability of the Bletchley Circle's ordinary lives in London.

**Author's Note:**

> For those who are curious, the British Navy slang used in this fic comes from this [archived page](https://web.archive.org/web/20070708135345/http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.1257) on the Royal Navy's website. Starfish sites were a very real phenomenon during WWII, with 237 decoys set up around 81 British towns and cities by the end of the war. As a fun fact concerning the music mentioned in this fic, the Brits really did associate Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 with victory during WWII, thanks to Morse code and some [truly fascinating propaganda campaigns](https://funkyadjunct.com/2013/07/18/v-for-victory-and-viral-3/). All of the history about the Ministry of Supply and those various crazy "Rainbow Code" projects is real, although I have no idea if any atomic spies ever traded information about Green Cheese or Red Angel. (And 100,000 Soviet rubles in 1953 is worth approximately £250,000 today—I may have had a bit too much fun tracking down the [relevant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble#Historical_official_exchange_rates) [conversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tables_of_historical_exchange_rates_to_the_United_States_dollar) and [inflation](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator) rates—but I have no idea what the KGB actually would have paid for nuclear secrets, since it seems that most atomic spies were in it for the ideology, not for the money?)
> 
> Also, yes, I have been writing excessive amounts of _CNV_-_TBC_ crossover fic, ever since realising how well the two fandoms fit together... stay tuned for [those](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1588594) on January 1, 2020!


End file.
